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Personal

End of / New Year update (2014/2015)

I’m not going to blather too much on here. Just dot down some bullet points to update you and remind my future self how things are going:

  • My running streak is still alive, it hit 3 years as of yesterday. My real celebration happened in October, when I passed day 1024:

  • Weight is once again well up. This is a problem I continue to have despite putting in 40-60 miles most weeks. It’s the result of a bad diet, a complete lack of discipline, and the high mileage.
  • I read “Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance“* over the Christmas break. It has given me a lot of ideas about how to lose weight while doing my lengthy commute runs.
  • One of the things it recommends is to track body fat rather than weight. So I got myself a set of Omron BF508 Body Composition and Body Fat Monitor Bathroom Scales* in the Amazon Boxing Day sales. I don’t know how they compare to “accurate” methods of measurement. It is a baseline from which to track my progress.
  • According to the book, I’m in the 5th percentile of “athletes” of my age. I’m not an athlete, but it gives me an idea of what other people doing a similar workload to me carry. It also tells me that maybe I should look after myself better.
  • Currently, I’ve marked the book as 3 stars on Goodreads. I shall revisit this in about 6 months and review it based on my results.
  • I once again intend to update this thing more, as a blog that reflects me and where I am right now. Expect more running, more tech stuff, as well as some reflection on the things I have consumed. Revisiting that stuff is both rewarding and useful. I should do it more.

\* I’ve stuck some affiliate links in there. Delete them if you care.

Categories
Technical

keeping this thing updated

…is a royal pain in the bollock. Figure I should give a small checklist of what Si has been working on:

XML Feed

I have just finished implementing an Atom feed for this mofo. It was ridiculously simple using Django – create a feed class, point the url file at it and you’re away. I think I will have to stick some per-category feeds in because that was waaaay too easy

Comments System

I am working on getting a comments system sorted ASAP, I think the power of blogging is in the dialogue – without it you have a glorified ego-wank. The aforementioned feed will not be going live until this is all cleared and working.

Super hyper mega WEB APP!!!

Hayley and me – we had one of them $5 ideas* that she swears is gonna make her us a million. I am not so sure. I just want to be able to say that I have successfully deployed a working web application, rather than being a dumb simpleton who has no idea of the rigeurs involved. The app itself is pretty useless to anyone not of the myspace generation and it took me just 45 minutes to manufacture a proof of concept (again – thanks to my boyfriend, Django) – but there is always a chance that Fox will give me £50 for it within the next 10 months, therefore making me a profit on my hosting. Wooyay.

* ok, it’s probably closer to 50p.

So yeah – still plenty on my plate, next post will hopefully about this mysterious wAPP (saying it aloud like that is strangely satisfying), if not inviting you – my non-readers – to leave a comment.

Categories
Technical

And so it begins

Yup – a pretty uninspired first post title, and what’s probably going to be an equally uninspired first post – but what the heck, I don’t see people reading this for a while now anyway. Basically I have been pissing about with various development tools on my own boxes for about 9 months now, I’ve gone through everything – PHP, Python, Ruby, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Dotnet, Visual Studio, Eclipse, VIM, Aptana… I’ve experimented with lots of different types of programming – AI, GUI, Linux, Win32, server-side, client-side, IM bots, games… and I’ve decided it’s about time I started putting stuff out there myself instead of leeching off of others’ hard sweat. With stuff being, “mistakes I have made that others may not have to”.

Python, Django Vim…I choose you!

Having battled through, I have finally achieved my desired set-up – or at least the one I am going to pursue for personal development in the forseeable future. My lingo of choice is Python – I have selected it because it feels like I can simply imagine code and it works. I like that. I’m not arsed about speed or any of those BS metrics, I just want to see stuff happen. (Although I have never had any troubles with Python regarding those sorts of things either.)

I planned on trying all of the Python frameworks (Turbogears, CherryPy, Zope etc.) but with Django it was love at first sight. It was so easy that it felt like cheating, and I am not one to feel guilty for living an easier life. If PHP was my only choice then Codeigniter would have been my way forward, but Python / Django seems to be gaining more acceptance with hosts and that looks to further pick up as it reaches that magical 1.0 release.

I have been really perservering with VIM for a while now and am now seeing the results. I wanted an editor which I could customise in any way I want, and having upgraded to version 7 I really don’t see anything it won’t let me do….Expect some scripts of beyond-dubious quality to be published on here as I start scripting stuff which I haven’t just ripped off some innocent French dude.

And finally…

Posts will inevitably stray off topic so don’t subscribe if you want pure technical writing (HAHAHAHA!!!!). Fanboyism is a disease – I consider myself OS-agnostic (they’re all quite pretty now, it all comes down to what I can afford / steal easily). I’m not big on memes – if there are 5 things you don’t know about me it is simply because I don’t want you to. The design of this blog will improve / change / mutate incrementally (with emphasis on the third, fourth and fifth syllables of that word) as I add features, currently I have just stuck in the bare bones. There’s not even an RSS feed yet let alone any sort of commenting. I won’t start pushing this / linking back until at LEAST those two features are implemented.

Last night I: signed up for hosting with webfaction.